Marketplace and personal space: Investigating the differential effects of attachment style across relationship contexts

An individual's tendencies in purely personal relationships seem to lead to related tendencies in consumer relationships. The following article presents a study that illustrates how individual differences in personal relationship attachment style can be used to predict the likely success of consumer relationships. In addition, it illustrates how the success of consumption versus nonconsumption relationships can be explained by the effect of attachment style on the individual's perception of qualities of the relationship. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Research notes and communications corporate restructuring and strategic change: The effect on diversification strategy and R & D intensity

In the 1980s a number of large corporations restructured their diversified businesses through divestitures. It is hypothesized that restructuring activity focused on firms at intermediate levels of diversification (e.g., related-linked) which have a mixture of related and unrelated business units. Results confirm this hypothesis which explains that such mixed corporate strategies create organizational and control inefficiencies in managing both related and unrelated types of business units. Restructured firms were also found to move towards two types of different internal capital markets (related and unrelated). Most restructuring firms moved toward lower levels of diversification (e.g., related-constrained), although some moved toward higher levels of diversification (e.g., unrelated business). Also, this study finds restructuring firms that changed their corporate strategy by reducing diversified scope increased their R&D intensity. Firms that restructured and increased their diversified scope decreased R&D intensity. This result suggested a partial substitution between diversification and R&D activity.     

Competitive decision making: Two and a half frames

We argue that the study of competitive decision making has been heavily influenced by the frames of reference that are adopted by researchers. The dominant economic frame and the emergent behavioral frame describe largely separate phenomena and have little overlap. Drawing from examples of learning in games and markets, we show how each of these frames falls short of capturing some interesting elements in competitive decisions. We then describe how a coevolutionary perspective may be emerging as an integrative paradigm for the study of competitive decisions.This paper was prepared for the conference, Understanding Competitive Decision Making. Comments by the participants of that conference and Paul Shoemaker are gratefully acknowledged, as are discussions with Colin Camerer, Eldar Shafir, and Sharoni Shafir.     

Opportunistic tendencies in IJVS with the Japanese: The effects of culture,shared decision making,and relationship age

This study investigated how partners' self-reported opportunism and shared decision making varied by culture in international joint ventures (IJVs) with the Japanese. Data were gathered by a mail survey of senior officials in IJVs located in 11 host countries. Significant differences were found between partners from Western cultures and the Japanese, but not between other Asians and the Japanese. Indirect effects suggest that shared decision making neutralizes cultural tendencies toward opportunism. Results indicated that opportunistic tendencies did not diminish as the IJV relationship aged, and that shared decision making did diminish as the relationship aged.     

Strategic Behavior and Consolidation in the Agricultural Biotechnology Industry

We develop a model explaining the consolidation patterns in the agricultural biotechnology industry. Among different consolidation and cooperation mechanisms, we consider collaborative and licensing agreements, joint ventures, acquisitions, and exchanges of ownership and spin-offs. The key results derive from the benefits of coordinated actions, distinction between transferable and nontransferable payoffs, the substitutability, complementarity, and the importance of the managers' noncontractible investments, and access and expansion of markets. Results from the model are used to examine the cooperation and consolidation activities for four major players in the agricultural biotechnology industry, DuPont , Dow Chemical , Monsanto , and Novartis .     

Entrepreneurial Intentions and Outcomes: a Comparative Causal Mapping Study

This paper uses a causal map methodology to consider the contrasts between entrepreneurial intentions and outcomes. In evaluating a series of propositions drawn from the extant literature the study finds that the elicited causal maps are consistent with contrasts in entrepreneurial intentions, but not outcomes. This suggests that the existing emphasis on entrepreneurial strategies being deliberate, conscious processes may be misplaced: non-deliberate, emergent strategies may be just as influential in producing entrepreneurial outcomes. The study develops a series of output propositions suggesting that entrepreneurial outcomes are associated with causal maps which connect the internal operations of the business with the external environment. This implies that entrepreneurial success may be a result of intuitive systems thinking in which connections are made between the environment and the internal operations of the business.     

Multiple regimes and cross-country growth behaviour

This paper provides some new evidence on the behaviour of cross-country growth rates. We reject the linear model commonly used to study cross-country growth behaviour in favour of a multiple regime alternative in which different economies obey different linear models when grouped according to initial conditions. Further, the marginal product of capital is shown to vary with the level of economic development. These results are consistent with growth models which exhibit multiple steady states. Our results call into question inferences that have been made in favour of the convergence hypothesis and further suggest that the explanatory power of the Solow growth model may be enhanced with a theory of aggregate production function differences.     

Political Unionism and the Collective Objective in Economies of British Colonial Origin: The Cases of Jamaica and Trinidad

Abstract . Developing countries face an inconsistency between the need for more equitable distribution of income and wealth between classes and groups and the goals of an industrial relations system in which the trade unions have a systematic commitment to allied political parties to support them in exchange for some control over economic and social policy, or where unions compete with parties for popular support of certain social and political goals. This is designated as 'political unionism' in contradistinction to 'business unionism' where unions support any party whose overall strategy and objectives are most compatible. The analysis shows that ‘political unionism’ led, in Jamaica and in Trinidad and Tabago, to lags in growth which make industrial relations reform a necessity of an effective program of social change.     

Organizational capabilities in e-commerce: An empirical investigation of e-brokerage service providers

E-commerce not only has tremendous potential for growth but also poses unique challenges for both incumbents and new entrants. By examining drivers of firm performance in e-commerce from a capabilities perspective, the authors conceptualize three firm capabilities that are critical for superior firm performance in e-commerce: information technology capability, strategic flexibility, and trust-building capability. The extent and nature of market orientation is conceptualized as a platform for leveraging e-commerce capabilities. The authors test the effects of e-commerce capabilities on performance (e.g., relative profits, sales, return on investment) using data from 122 e-brokerage service providers. The results indicate that information technology capability and strategic flexibility affect performance given the right market orientation. Amit Saini (asaini2@unl.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He conducts research in the area of marketing strategy, technology-marketing interface, e-commerce strategy, and customer relationship management. He has presented papers at major conferences, and his research appears in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science and American Marketing Association—Marketing Educator’s Conference Proceedings. His industry experience includes sales management and quantitative market research. Jean L. Johnson (Johnsonjl@wsu.edu) is a professor of marketing at Washington State University. Her research includes partnering capabilities development in, and management of, interfirm relationships and management of international strategic alliances. Her research appears in journals such as theJournal of Marketing, the Journal of International Business Studies, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theInternational Journal of Research in Marketing. She serves on the editorial boards of theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Retailing, theJournal of Business and Industrial Marketing, and reviews for others. She spent several years in the advertising industry and has lived, taught, and conducted research in France and Japan. She has been selected to cochair the 2006 winter American Marketing Association (AMA) conference.